Saints and Martyrs
by restlessxpen
Summary: A train is approaching, and Jacob must decide which side of the tracks he wants to be on when it comes through when all of his possibilities have seemed to dwindle down to one. An angst-ridden entry for the Black Balloon Contest


**The Black Balloon Contest**

**Title: **Saints and Martyrs

**Your pen name: **restlessxpen

**Characters: **Jacob Black, Bella Swan, Leah Clearwater

**Disclaimer: **I don't own any of these characters. They are the sole property of Stephenie Meyer, and I am simply an admirer of her work who likes to fiddle with her characters. Also, the quote about Saints and Martyrs? Yeah, that's hers too.

**Author Notes: **This theme is somewhat dark, considering that angst is what this contest is all about, but I couldn't resist submitting, because angst is what I do best. ;)

* * *

I could hear the train coming like a phantom wailing through the shadows of the night. It was still far down the track, but it was blasting its horn, warning all trespassers off of its track, unless they wanted to meet a gruesome, painful death. I could feel the vibrations beginning in the earth underneath my bare feet.

I had no idea where the hell I was. The train was the first appearance of civilization I had come across in several hours. I could see its light shining in the distance, glaring down the tracks in my direction. I felt caught in its light. I felt it burning my flesh, like the searing eye of God that had refused me entrance, had opened up the mouth of the earth, and was preparing to drop me straight into hell.

I almost wished that I could feel the flames. I wanted the acidic heat to eat away my memories until there was nothing left but a clean slate and memories of nothing.

Memories were the devil incarnate.

I felt them prodding their pitchfork into my heart, bruising the tender organ until it began to weaken and groan in protest. I rubbed a hand over my bare chest, but nothing could appease the ache. I couldn't escape it, not even as a wolf. If anything, the pain was more acute to my fur-coated alias. All of my senses were heightened post-phase. Not only could I feel the pain, but I could smell it and taste it and hear it. It gained a physical quality to it, as if it had a name and a face.

Maybe it _did_ have a name and a face.

The name was Bella Swan. The face was creamy pale, smooth, unblemished, and always hinted with an overcast of indecision. The brown irises of her eyes often focused on me, but they never really seemed to see me. I had only once felt the softness of her lips, but that kiss had been a lie. I'd only once touched her hair, but she'd pulled away before I could lace my fingers into it and really feel it.

I knew her scent better than I knew mine.

I felt her heart more than I felt mine. I could feel its pulse in my own wrist. My own breath depended on its rhythmic beat. Sometimes I wished that I could feel it skitter in anticipation upon sensing my presence, but it felt nothing outside of platonic affection. I was a little blimp on her radar while she filled up my entire screen.

When I closed my eyes, the only thing that I could see was her.

The train's horn blasted again, but I was a million miles away behind my closed lids, and I was several hours back in the past, lingering among the impressions that a boy and a girl had made in a house in La Push where the boy lived.

--- /3 ---

**Four Hours Previous**

Her bracelet felt like an emblem for my shame. I'd given it to her with the wolf charm, and she'd added the diamond heart. She must have thought it beautiful, but I could only picture the creature that it represented. The bastard had put his hands on the bracelet, and he had soiled the only thing I had ever been able to give to Bella that she had accepted.

She deflected my love with the grace and ease of a dancer that was hitting all of the right steps even as the tempo quickened its pace. When I tried to take her hand, her fingers somehow slid free. When I went to touch her, she stepped just of reach. When I tried to tell her what was laying heavy weight on my soul, she barely heard a word I spoke.

"I'm leaving."

They were the only two words I had ever spoken that Bella seemed to grasp. I watched her digest them, forming an expression that slowly crept across her face, as if she'd just taken a drink of something sour, and it was only beginning to seep into her taste buds.

"What are you talking about, Jake?"

I could smell Edward all over her. She was too beautiful to smell like rot, but she did. I wanted to ask her if she had any idea that she smelled like a corpse—that that thing that had been touching her and kissing her _was_ a corpse. Didn't she feel the cold? Taste the danger of his skin?

"I'm leaving," I repeated. "As in, going away and never coming back."

I hated it when she pretended to care. Didn't she realize that I knew that those tears were not really for me? At least, not in the way that I could ever accept? They were tears of selfishness. They were tears that welled in fear that she was losing a fundamental beam in the structure that kept her standing. I had been made for her support, not for her love, and, if I was removed, she might topple over when Edward Cullen disappointed her again.

He had left once. What would stop him from going again at the first sign of trouble?

She had to understand that I couldn't work that way. I didn't want to be a column of the structure that kept her safe. I wanted to be living in that place with her. I wanted to be the one that she yearned and wept for.

If I had been that man, the wolf would have remained the sole charm on that bracelet.

"Y-You can't do that, Jake," she stammered.

"Stop, Bella. Stop trying to pretend like you have the feelings for me that I want you to. Stop trying to keep me here."

She lifted her hands. They opened and then closed on thin air, as if they meant to grab for me, but they couldn't quite manage the task. Even touching me was too much to ask of her. I watched the bracelet slide down her wrist as she raised her hands. It seemed like no matter which way she held her arm, the diamond heart was always in my view.

"You don't understand--"

I interrupted, "I heard what you said to him in the tent in the hills. You plan to marry him. You let him put that damn diamond on my bracelet. I know where I fit into this plan for your life, Bella. I _don't _fit in at all."

"That's not true."

Her voice had gone quiet, speaking volumes of the truth. I wished that I had already left so that I wouldn't have had to listen to her telling me exactly what I had known all along just by saying nothing at all. I wasn't going to stick around to see her in a white dress, walking down the aisle toward Edward.

"It is true," I argued. "You don't want me. You never have--"

Bella kissed me, swallowing my words. It was a kiss of last resort. I could feel the desperation in it. She placed her hands on my chest as she took it, but they remained closed into fists. They wouldn't open and hold onto me, because it wasn't me that they really wanted to hold onto. She was just trying to get me to stay in the only way she thought could tempt me.

I let her kiss me, because I wanted to taste her. I always had. It would be one more memory to file, to keep with me for the rest of my lonely, miserable life. Her lips were soft, but they were stiff too. They didn't know how to move against mine, and they weren't there to taste or enjoy, they were there to manipulate. Her heart wasn't in the kiss, and her heart was the only thing that I really cared about.

Gently, I took her by the shoulders, and I pushed her away.

"That's not how it works, Bells."

She was searching my face as I said this, as if trying to see the first crumbling of my will, but her kiss had failed, and she saw this almost immediately. She seemed to wilt in front of me, like a pretty bloom that was closing against the bite of winter. I didn't have the green thumb to coax her open again.

"Jake, please..."

"Stop. You've made your choice. You can't hide that from me, and I can't just be your friend."

"I could try--"

"No," I cut across her. "It's done. I can't stay here and see you with the leeches."

Bella flinched. "Why do you call them that? They've never done anything wrong to you or anyone. They're good people."

I smiled, bitterly. It was like Bella had completely forgotten all of the things that Cullen's really had done to me. They'd taken away part of my life. They'd forced me to change, to phase for the very first time, to grow until I'd matured beyond my years. They'd shoved a fate onto me that I couldn't shed, because I was a werewolf by genetics, and I would always have to rise to fight them.

But, most of all, they'd taken Bella from me, and I was sure that, one day, Edward would find a way to take her permanently, in a way that there would be no returning from.

"You think I should be as forgiving as you are? We can't all be saints and martyrs."

"You give me too much credit."

I continued to smile, drinking in the sight of her, like it was the last time that I would see her. I hoped it would be. I couldn't continue to exist like this.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I do."

- - 3 - -

I had one foot on the tracks, and I wasn't sure what I was planning to do.

The train was approaching with what felt like more speed, counting down the minutes I had to make my decision. The horn sounded again. This time it expelled a long breath, as if the conductor had spotted me and was trying to frighten me from the tracks.

I wondered if he understood the meaning of heartbreak.

"Is this the way you want to go?"

I looked up, skyward, as if expecting a divine light to have parted the night sky and focused on me, like I was waiting to hear that voice that told me I was damned for all eternity. I wondered if this was the question that would redeem or outcast me, and I thought that, considering how close the train was, I didn't have nearly enough time to give it proper consideration.

A hand closed around my wrist, and it pulled me back, away from the tracks.

"No," I said.

It seemed like the hand had appeared just in time to guide me, which was why I was surprised to turn and find Leah. Her eyes were dark and on my face, and I could see little twigs and pieces of leaves stuck in her hair. Her clothes were torn a little, and I wondered how long she'd followed me on four paws and how long she'd followed me on two.

"Then what the hell are you doing?" she demanded.

Her voice didn't have its usual edge. Its jagged lines seemed to have gone smooth for the time being, like it was trying to be soft with me. Leah was never soft. I wondered if the train had actually hit me, but I heard the horn again, and I was pretty sure that it was rattling the heels of my feet and that I was alive.

"Trying to decide," I told her.

She scowled, and she seemed a little bit more normal then.

"Don't you think I know how this feels? I'm the damn bridesmaid in his wedding."

Leah had always tried to keep her head high about Sam, but her darkest feelings were still visible any time that her mind was linked with mine as a wolf. I could feel her hurt in those moments, and I could taste how raw they still were, but how could she fight fate? An imprint was irreversible. She'd been the loser from the start. She had never had a chance at all.

"I know," I told her. "I'm sorry. It's awful."

She nodded. "Yeah, it is."

Leah Clearwater was the only person in the world that understood my pain. Funny to think how one tragedy could link two souls together that, otherwise, had nothing in common. Leah's sarcasm had always grated against my nerves. She had always been too tough, too brave, too angry.

But, as she stood in the light of the train's one, cyclops eye with me, she seemed different. She seemed almost touchable. The train reached us. It blew past, a blur of dark gray steel.

"Let's go home," she said. "It's late, and this is stupid. You're going to be fine, Jacob. Trust me. Someday, you won't think about her more than once every other hour."

I looked at her, and she looked at me. I felt something between us. It wriggled a little, like it was trying to lift its head, but the surface it was trying to break was thick and grown over, and it calmed and fell back into its slumber, never to be recognized or acknowledged.

We let it pass as I followed her back to La Push.

I wasn't Sam, and she wasn't Bella.

We were just Leah and Jacob, and, somehow, we had survived for now.


End file.
